A while back, I wrote an article on the importance of cloud computing. A few people posted some good comments and feedback, but last night I got such a long and well thought out comment that I thought it deserved it’s own post. So, without further adieu, here are the thoughts of Daniel Kadosh. Read the rest of this entry »
OK, so this article probably doesn’t have a ton of mass appeal, but since upgrading to Snow Leopard I’ve run into a major issue with the way PHP is compiled in this distribution. Overall, I’m incredibly satisfied with the way everything’s set up by default in Snow Leopard (PHP 5.3 with bundled GD, mysqlnd, etc.), but the big glaring hole in everything was the lack of Freetype support. I’ve been working on a graphing library for my day job, and as such found the need to place text in my images (strange, right?). Anyway, I finally took the plunge and figured out how to get that sucker compiled in there. Here’s what you have to do… Read the rest of this entry »
You may (or may not) have noticed that there’s A LOT of talk about cloud computing these days. The problem with all this chatter is that it’s incredibly hard to follow. There seems to be a wealth of different definitions of just what cloud computing actually is, and not without good reason. The “cloud” is a pretty ambiguous term, and as such anything attached to it only makes the whole thing a little more ambiguous. Rather than go off on a rant about how all this confusion is leading to a lot of misconceptions about various cloud-based services, let me clarify what I’m going to talk about. This will not be a discussion of certain SaaS stuff living in the cloud (like gmail, twitter, etc.), but rather actual cloud-based computing services and why you need to be using them. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, it’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally managed to get the next release of my PHP Thumbnailer library completed! I’m also happy to announce that the project finally has its own website: http://phpthumb.gxdlabs.com. I’ve put a lot of work into bringing the class up to date, making it extensible, and most of all, making sure its well documented! I’ve also tried to make it easier to get help through either bug reports or forums dedicated to the project itself.
Rather than go into any detail, I want to encourage you to check out the project’s new site. Feel free, however, to share any thoughts you have in the comments for this post 
APIs have become a very commonplace part of many popular web sites and services… especially REST APIs. I’ve already discussed how you can roll your own REST API for your PHP apps, but I’ve also received countless requests to go over how to actually make RESTful requests. That’s exactly what we’ll take a look at in this article. Before we dive in, however, I want to make sure you’ve got a basic understanding of how REST APIs work, so if you’re a bit shaky or unfamiliar with the concept, head on over to my previous article on REST and read up (you don’t need to go over the implementation stuff if you don’t want, just read the first part of the article). Seriously, do it… this article is written with the assumption you’re familiar with the concepts of REST.
Anyway, without any further delay, let’s take a look at what we’re going to cover… Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to Gen X Design. The name’s a little corny, I know, but it’s one of those things I’ve used since I was a kid.
Anyway, I built this site for me (and some friends) to share their thoughts and ideas. I love all things web 2.0, shiny icons, and gradients. I live in the San Francisco Bay area, work for eMeter, and am sometimes available for contract work.
Mozilla announced a new feature for add-ons today: collections. It also looks like they’re getting the ball rolling with several useful collections, such as the Web Developer Collection. It includes all sorts of goodness like Firebug, ySlow, GreaseMonkey, ColorZilla, and many more. Well worth a quick visit.
FireFox Web Developer Collection
David Walsh has put together a really handy plugin for MooTools called ScrollSpy. What impressed me the most was the automatic display of a “Return to Top” link on your page once you’ve scrolled beyond a certain boundary. There are also a handful of other neat demos worth checking out. Sounds simple, but if you think about it, there are tons of great applications for this plugin.
http://davidwalsh.name/scrollspy
It’s been said a thousand times I’m sure, but picking the right JavaScript framework is a pain. There are all sorts of biased arguments for one vs. another, but there’s really nothing subjective out there… until now. Arguably, jQuery is probably the most popular JS framework out in the wild, but that doesn’t always mean it’s the best choice. What you choose should really depend on what you’re trying to do. Aaron Newton of Clientcide has put together a really impressive look at jQuery vs. MooTools, which doesn’t categorically say one is better than the other, but, rather, goes into detail about why one framework is better than the other based on your needs. Definitely worth a read:
www.jqueryvsmootools.com
ORM is certainly a very popular concept these days, but I haven’t really come across any PHP implementations that I found worth-while. Sure, big frameworks like CakePHP may have ORM functionality, but I’m not a fan of huge frameworks. I’ve also dabbled in my own implementations, but never got too far, as I’m not a fan of re-inventing the wheel. At any rate, I stumbled across Doctrine by accident (good ol’ RSS readers), and am impressed, mostly because it’s something that can be integrated into existing projects / frameworks.
www.doctrine-project.org
Ajaxload.info used to be the site of choice when it came to generating preloader images… unfortunately, I think it’s been bested. Preloaders.net allows you to generate not only the standard set of preloaders, but even 3D ones! You also get much more control (size, speed, etc.) and the quality of the final images is impressive. Definitely worth checking out.
www.preloaders.net
